IGR Teams up with Marines to Deliver Holiday Cheer



2nd Brigade assists the U.S.M.C. and the Marine Corp Legion in providing "Toys for Tots" at the Valparaiso National Guard Armory on 17 December. The brigade members packed toys for distribution, provided crowd control and parking lot assistance.  Merry Christmas!
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Operation Cookie Donation
By Tom Lange / Johnson County Daily Journal

A freshman at Roncalli High School wanted to find a way to help welcome home returning soldiers and to let those leaving for overseas deployments know that people were thinking of them.

Megan Powell asked her class­mates early this month to help gather cookies for soldiers at Camp Atterbury. She thought the school would collect enough cookies to fill the trunk of a car.

In three weeks, Powell and the 1,100 Roncalli students collected 602 packages containing 21,000 cookies, enough to fill a truck.
The treats from Roncalli filled one-third of the goal set by the organizers of Operation Cookie Donation. The drive, in its second year, is collecting cookies for the soldiers and civilians preparing to leave for or arriving at Camp Atterbury from overseas deploy­ments. Last year organizers collected 55,000 cookies for soldiers at Atterbury, and this year they're hoping to collect at least 60,000.

The cookies are a small way for the community to say thank you to soldiers who have been deployed to places such as Iraq or Afghanistan. They also open a door for chaplains to talk with soldiers about how their deployments went and how they feel about returning home, said David Owens, chaplain and donation organizer.

"The cookies give a ‘welcome home' to the taste buds but just as importantly open a door to see how the soldier is doing," Owens said.

When a solider stops to grab a cookie from Atterbury's chapel, it gives the base's chaplains a chance to see how soldiers are doing, how their families are, whether they have a job lined up and whether they're having problems dealing with any issues from their deployment, Owens said.

For other soldiers, a cookie simply serves as a small but significant welcome home. Owens remembered talking to a soldier last year who said the donated cookies were the best meal she'd had in 400 days. Owens told the soldier to remember to be respectful of the company's cook. The soldier told Owens she was the company's cook.

Forty-eight organizations donated cookies or money to buy drinks for soldiers last year, and Owens hopes even more groups will contribute this year. Powell, whose father, the Rev. Mark Powell, is one of the organ­izers, thought it would be a good idea to pair gathering cookies with Roncalli's annual canned food drive.

"At Roncalli we are given so many blessings to be able to go to that school, that when we have much, much is expected," she said.

Powell worked with Bob Tully, coordinator of special projects at Roncalli, to create announcements for students during the school's daily 30-minute study hall. The first announcements went out Nov. 14, and by the end of the week 21,000 cookies had been collected, Powell said.

Organizers don't know whether the donation will become a regular occurrence, but Powell already is thinking about next year and hopes Roncalli can collect 1,000 packages for Atterbury. And she's hopeful the school will continue collecting cookies after she graduates, she said.
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